Caparo T1 [World Car Fans]

Related:
Car Hack's Notebook: Top of the Top Marques [internal]

Germany is the land of the free when it comes to driving — one endless, luscious, bouncy ribbon of delimited highways. If one could find a 300-mph car, one could drive at 300mph; that's the glossy image projected around the world. But Germany's relationship to highway speed is changing. Already the road to glory is punctuated by restricted zones patrolled by unmarked cars. Participants in a recent Gumball event faced a breathalyser and a stern warning when it got to Germany. They were not to go mad on these roads. The remaining, derestricted parts of the autobahn are now under threat from an environmental standpoint, too, with the plastic-sandal brigade pointing out that cars, at flat chat, use copious amounts of fuel. While that may be correct in terms of physics and chemistry, it's still annoying and looks set to sound the death knell for flat-out motoring in the end.

There is a bizarre form of social awareness, too. If you speed up and down the wrong section of road, you can expect to find the Polizei waiting for a chat — alerted by the locals.

Having done just that in 9ff's 910-hp — yes, really — 997 Cabriolet, I was confronted with a very gruff man in uniform. At least he gave up after speaking fruitlessly in German, relenting only to tell me in ice-cold English that they had ways of checking my speed.

Now that simply wasn't true, but it sounds right when a man with a heavy moustache and a firearm is telling you. He really wasn't happy.

Of course I had seen them coming and trundled back well below the 70 kph (43 mph) limit I had barely registered before. It felt like a walking pace, and it was on a straight road, but I still felt like I had invaded their nation the way they reacted.

It was always going to be tricky to keep this piece of 911-based firebreathing lunacy out of trouble as it was. It has enough raw power to make the tires spin on the rim at speeds of up to 150 mph.

A few seconds of acceleration was all it took to leave the speed limit far behind and this was a car that was a nightmare to contain. Not because it was difficult on low revs, considering what they've done to the thing it drives through town with no complaint.

Once it hits 4000 rpm, though, this insanely fast creation just shoots down the road as if carried by elastic and can stay with the Ferrari Enzo and Pagani Zonda F. And it was wobbling like a shot foal the whole way through the first three gears when pressing on the gas. It's hilarious...

The only problem is that this car is louder than the last moments of Pompeii, a sports exhaust, that much power and a bassline determined for a certain kind of customer left us driving something marginally quieter than a detonating missile. Easyjet's 737s landed by our side yet three people called the police to discuss our car.

After a lengthy discussion with the increasingly relaxed policeman, he agreed it was the sports exhaust that was at fault and our offense sounded far worse than it really was. Our part of the bargain was to agree our test of a car that went on to claim the title of the World's fastest convertible with a 238 mph run at Nardo was over, immediately.

That relatively innocuous looking soft-top is now winning drag races in Eastern Europe, but it did serve to highlight that even Germany has its limits. And if you're going to speed, make sure you do it in the right place. And in a quiet car. – Nick Hall

[Birmingham, UK-based Nick Hall's Car Hack's Notebook column runs whenever he has a free moment between flogging exotic tuners and supercars on European highways and test tracks. Right now, he's between sips of sherry cocktail in his favorite chaise lounge, positioned somewhere in southern Spain.]

Related:
Car Hack's Notebook: Top of the Top Marques [internal]

This past week took me to Top Marques in Monaco, the ostentatious home of pure money yet consistent proof money does not buy class. Monaco is populated by rich, orange women well into their 50s who still believe they can carry off miniskirts. But it is also home to the world's most glamorous car show, with passenger rides round the Grand Prix track thrown into the bargain. And faced with such hot metal it is only natural to revert to the child within and go begging rides in the best of the bunch. The fact that the press were limited to one passenger ride per show made it all the more fun, the pits area turned into a black market of promised coverage, favors cashed in and backs rubbed, figuratively anyway...

The circuit was clogged with traffic, the cops almost put FIA GT star Wolfgang Kaufmann in jail by the end of day two due to him daring to accelerate up to the 50 kph (31 mph) limit in the Gemballa Mirage GT, all 650bhp of it, and Ariel also attracted a little trouble with the Atom's tendency to cut through traffic.

A closed road would have made it a lot better, but the drivers still found the odd hole in the gridlock for a blast of pure acceleration.

Gumpert's Apollo looked like the star of the show from where we stood, in a spectacular shade of lurid orange. This car is a relative bargain when compared to the Ferrari Enzo and LP640 and has the brute looks to force its way in to the supercar market. With a 650 bhp+ 4.2-liter Audi twin-turbo engine it's a borderline racing car, with a traditional six-speed manual gearbox, and it's going to be a star.

The German marque also went along with our bizarre photographic respects and many thanks to Ann-Caitrin for playing the role of Cannonball girl. With a degree in International Business on the way, she's smarter than we'll ever be, too...

Lamborghini bought legendary test driver Valentino Balboni for the occasion. He must have felt vaguely ridiculous providing a supercar taxi service for punters at pedestrian speeds round Casino Square and Rascasse. But as a chance to get up close and personal with this the most beautiful car on this Earth one more time and meet one of the heroes of the driving world on one of the legendary tracks, well it was cool at the time.

Tours of the circuit in the sledgehammer Koenigsegg CCX with its nonsensical door action, inimitable phone dial centre console and ear-splitting tones, a Fisker Tramonto that looks like a difficult choice to justify next to the Aston Martin AMV8 and the Leblanc Mirabeau, a Le Mans-style beast with licence plates, the practicality of a chocolate fireguard and the kind of pace to set your hair on fire helped the day go with a bang.

Refined breaks inside the Bentley Arnage Turbo and the perfectly composed 599 GTB Fiorano helped round out our $5 million hitch hiking adventure in Monaco. It was cheesy, it was hectic and with the Gumpert it was also mildly degrading to women. It was also a pretty impressive way to spend a day.

Related:
Car Hack's Notebook: The Dakar [internal]

When he's not writing Car Hack's Notebook columns for the Jalop, our mate from Birmingham, UK, Nick Hall must suffer his day job. Such drudgery it is to fly to Scottsdale, Arizona to drive the Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera in the desert at ludicrous speeds, trying to outwit a police force that lives to put his speed-gathering ass in the joint. What torture it must be to face the blank page after such a trip.

The final figure would have Arizona State Troopers reaching for the extradition papers, as figures of, theoretically speaking of course, 172mph, is akin to setting off a dirty bomb in a schoolyard round these parts. Of course it might just be bluff and bravado, depending on whether your belt carries a holster and cuffs.

WCF Test Drive: Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera [World Car Fans]

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Last month, St phane Peterhansel, Cyril Despres and Hans Stacey cemented their status as legends with victory in arguably the scariest, most hardcore event in the world, and yet their wins on an event simply known as The Dakar barely registered a blip on the news. When a ChampCar driver next complains about a bump in mid-corner, he might want to consider being shot at by Algerian rebels intent on theft and kidnap, lions waiting in the pit lane or even cresting a hill to find the shifting road surface has left a 40-foot drop on the other side. These men are heroes.

Yet the biggest headline grabs from a monumental tale of human achievement were good ol' boy Jeff Robby Gordon winning a stage in the Hummer and the Vatican wading in after the tragic death of South African biker Elmer Symonsand to call the event: "A Bloody Race of Irresponsibility."

These are strong words, normally reserved for pop stars grinding against religious icons in a bid to shift a few more plastic discs. Of course lots of people watch motorsport for the crashes in the first place, the Dakar has some monsters and the Vatican's comments may have doubled the audience. The organizers were probably privately thankful for the divine intervention, but the Dakar deserves a worldwide audience anyway.

There are shunts, but the length and nature of the event that was originally the Paris-Dakar means it's far more than a barrel-rolling, fireball of an accident waiting to happen: it's an emotional journey.

This year's event started in Portugal, making a nonsense of the name, and went through Spain, Morocco, Mauritania, Mali and Senegal. Travel writers could turn this into a year-long odyssey, but these guys did it in two weeks, against the clock, with just a compass and a map for guidance. The bikers are even more impressive; at least the cars come with a co-driver to share the load.

Sound boring? You're wrong, just imagine trying to negotiate your way through the desert, remote towns populated with heavy wildlife and forests at high speed. And imagine watching the leader of the bikes with the fate-tempting name of Marc Coma and sharing his desperation. He went 6 km off route in the final hour after leading most of the rally and, in his haste to get back, hit an immovable object and literally flipped out of the event.

It was classic, nailbiting sporting drama with a two-week event coming down to vital seconds and minutes before a competitor finally caved in to the pressure.

Despres' took his second victory aboard the near unbeatable KTM, which is spoken of in hushed tones among bikers due to its endurance record, yet the drawing of a track car it recently released have probably earned the Austrian manufacturer more kudos around the world.

Peterhansel, meanwhile, took Mitsubishi's seventh consecutive win by less than eight minutes after 46 hours of timed stages at a time when most fans of the marque are still using former glories in the World Rally Championship to demonstrate its dominance.

There were other stellar stories, too, like the works Fiat team taking on the desert in the near-ridiculous looking Panda 4x4, drivers forced to come up with impromptu fixes for problems that would have our cars trailered from the roadside and just 300 finishing from a starting lineup of almost 600.

And it all takes place against some the kind of cinematic backdrops that would make Ridley Scott cry tears of pure joy, with stunning helicopter shots of cars, trucks and bikes riding dunes like ocean waves, pelting along gravel roads and soaring through the air like they had wings.

It's magical TV and, if you can tune in, you really should. If only for the monster crashes... – Nick Hall

This week's task involved chasing a big black cat in a big black cat, in one of those painfully tenuous story hooks where I took the Jaguar XKR on a futile hunt for the Beast of Bodmin Moor.

There are about three grainy photos, a long distance video of what looks like a housecat and very little else to prove the existence of what is thought to be a family of Pumas living out in the most depressing territory known to man. Even the Royal Air Force failed to find them with night-vision equipment and a cynic might be tempted to believe that one bedraggled cat died many years ago and is being kept alive as a myth to pull in the gullible few.

I was starting to feel the same way about the manufacturer. Even by Ford's standards Jaguar is a black sheep and has lost more than $1 billion a year almost every year since joining the Blue Oval's portfolio. And while Aston Martin is being hawked off to pay the bills, Jaguar as it stands anyway, isn't even worth sticking on eBay.

Who among you, under the age of 40 even thinks about buying a Jag these days? We all have our sights set on a Beemer, a Merc, an Audi, even a Lexus, Yes we all have an E-Type in our dream garage, or an XK120, forgetting that they're hateful little shits that will rip you limb from limb faster than a white tiger at a magic show, but before the new XK, did you really think about a new one? If you did I bet you wear beige pants and eat at the wealthy equivalent of Country Kitchen Buffet.

Jaguar's customers are sitting in a retirement home while a bag goes to the toilet for them. That's where Jaguar's sales have gone, they're waiting for God or have met him already.

Jaguar woken up to the problem far too late and the X-Type was a hamfisted attack on the Yoof market that almost killed the brand altogether.

The XKR, though, is a fantastic bit of kit. It's quick, courtesy of the Supercharged engine, it looks almost good enough to justify those self-congratulatory 'Beautiful' adverts. Next to this beast, the BMW M6 and big power Mercedes look like candidates for Extreme Makeover, the ones that even the plastic surgeons wince at the sight of.

It will go faster than the AMV8, with far more comfort, and put it on a track and it will turn drifting into your new national sport. It's that damned good, and you don't have to be "this age or higher" to take the ride. This is a car that a young, thrusting executive would be proud to own.

The same goes for the upcoming X-CF saloon car, finally a saloon car with the big cat on the bonnet that doesn't come with the unmovable smell of urine and butterscotch candy. It's a cool car and if it drives half as well as it looks then it will be a superstar.

Putting brand in the black might be a bit too much to ask for these two cars, but as a driving force Jaguar is back. – Nick Hall

WCF Test Drive: Jaguar XKR [World Car Fans]

Related:
Car Hack's Notebook: Tomorrow's Classic, Today; Dan Neil on the XKR [internal]

My dad's love of classics always bemused me as a child. This was a time of radical leaps in horsepower, performance, styling, every facet of car design, and he was buried in some edition of Pipe Smokers and Classic Jaguar Lovers monthly, with a free anorak with every subscription. He clearly knew nothing...

Of course I was also convinced Baywatch and Beverly Hills 90210 were unmissable entertainment, wrestling was real, Cyndi Lauper was a sex goddess, Soda Stream was a good idea and that dressing like a bad rip-off of Don Johnson would have the girls flocking to my door. I was a child of the 80s and we made mistakes.

And now it looks like my dad can serve me a huge slice of humble pie on the car front, something that won't give him any pleasure at all. Oh no...

See I never quite figured out how we suddenly got turned on to old cars, how the process happened. The only kids that grow up liking old cars lose their hair at the age of 12 and go on to become Science teachers, so there's a breaking point involved — a rejection of modern values that lands eccentric characters on the humorous section on local news.

Mine came, behind the wheel of the BMW M5, at the age of 30. Not wishing to believe it, not wishing to accept this sign of passage into old age I refused to write this column, or anything like it, for nigh on a year. See, I grew up with Bimmers and genuinely believe they were the very best drivers' cars in the sector. They still are, which is even more depressing.

So, with this bias in mind the M5 got another chance, and another, and then the M6 got a crack, but it's not getting any better.

This is the advance of technology in all its glory, a comfortable four-seater with supercar performance. Not only does it come with the adjustable 507 hp powerplant, you can also adjust more or less anything, from the suspension and super clever seven-speed sequential's level of aggression right through to the time it takes the lights to dim when you switch it off at night.

It took three Playstations' worth of computing power to get all that done, and it feels like one too. On a games console you can blow the limbs off Armenian children all day without feeling a whiff of emotion. And you can hurl the M5 at the horizon at such velocity the sound of maniacal laughter should drown out the bang of your exploding heart, yet the World Staring Championship would be more exciting.

I hate it with every fiber of my being. It would be easier to bond with a Korean serial killer.

You can forgive crap cars for being crap, they're cheap, they're comfortable, they have something going for them. The M5 is a mass of muscle and speed, it should be great, yet it has the worst crappy-paddle gearchange, traction control that feels like it's driving for you and Necrophiliacs probably get more feeling, more warmth, from their "lovers."

And this pains me so, because the E39 M5 was arguably the greatest sports saloon of all time. This was a huge four-door saloon with subtle looks, monumental pace and the capacity to take every bend at progressively ludicrous angles, so it had the same strengths.

Yet the old-school M5's beauty lay in its simplicity: a well-balanced chassis, a proper gearbox and traction control that was either on or off. The car changed gear when the driver told it to, it slid wide when the driver told it to, it did everything the driver wanted to. We didn't need all the Starship Enterprise rubbish then and we don't want it now.

But that is the march of progress, wrapped up in one model evolution. And the start of a love affair that I don't really like. In 10 years, probably less, the E39 M5 will be a classic car, and in my eyes will almost certainly be better than anything that has replaced it.

I will be a classic car enthusiast, and my children, should some woman be so unlucky, will look at me as if I know nothing. I can always tell them those school-age kids are 35 years old and those brave wrestlers are far better actors, but such hollow victories will not compensate for the glaring defeat that now stares me in the face.

Kids be careful what you say about your dad's dream cars, for just like his waistline and his hairline, you are staring at your own future. – Nick Hall

Related:
Hacker's Notebook: Ferrari Hits Its Stride [internal]

At a show where pure lunacy struggles to get through the door, it was always going to be tough to pick out a star, but that's the job and ignoring the more obvious option here it is: The Mission 400 Plus. Now why this modified Porsche above the countless others that littered the show? Well how's about the basic figures of 1,069 hp and 921 lb-ft of torque achieved with the delicate act of strapping two dirty great turbos to the 3.8-liter 997 engine for a start?

The 997 Carrera S's aerodynamics have been totally revised with a new roof, shallow-raked screen and smoothed just about everything. It works in the wind-tunnel, but that is all for now and the men behind the project were surprisingly candid when they admitted the road testing will be a whole new world and there's no guarantee that it will work at all.

J rgen Alzen Motorsport is responsible, though, and they know a thing or two about Porsche tuning, racing and everything that goes with it. I would be willing to break the journalistic bank and lay five bucks on this machine hitting Nardo or even Bonneville Salt Flats like a whirlwind at some point and both are already being considered for the run that 9ff has already proven can be done. So has this group, as attested to by the 216 mph, 600bhp+ Audi A4 sitting next to the Mission 400 Plus.

If they can make it work, and keep it on the road long enough to break the magic 400 km/h mark, then the Bugatti Veyron had better watch its back, literally, as this is lighter, cheaper and infinitely more fun. There's that sneaking suspicion it will take the bends about as well as a fast-surfacing scuba diver, but who really cares when a car is this insanely fast.

Cargraphic's 4-liter GT3 RSC, meanwhile, is all ready to go. Resplendent in wasp-style warning colors, this lightweight leviathan is sure to continue the company's near violent reputation when it comes to high performance through natural aspiration. This is a company that produced a 420 hp car that held station with 650 hp GT2s at the recent Tuner Grand Prix. And the 997 variant should be even better.

So with a refined aerodynamics kit, new suspension, lightweight wheels and a dollop of extra horsepower, the company should have a hit on its hands and rivals will not be happy when this car comes to defend the 996's crown at subsequent Tuner Grands Prix at Hockenheim.

Michael and Thomas Schnarr have mastered the GT3 like no other and have learned to bring out its natural character with flashes of color rather than the broad strokes of the brush some tuners just cannot resist — sometimes to the detriment of the end product.

I would include TechArt in that list, but then the truly mad TechArt Widebody kind of makes up for anything that happened before. This is the Leonberg firm's second crack at the mid-engined instant classic after the Cayman GT that won serious praise from some serious places. This one is 8mm wider for improved cooling and aero work, and will be a better car. So forget the fact that it's only marginally more subtle than Russian-bound Sushi, it's going to be almighty.

TechArt's engineers felt the need to fit a 3.8-liter powerplant from the Carrera S and then still weren't happy, so they bored it out some more. The new capacity of 3.843 litres is still some way short of 9ff's 4.1-liter monster, but then this may just be a useable every day road car, if you can handle the attention.

If not, just floor it, as this beast will get to 62mph in less than 3.5s and roar through the gears, although Porsche's gearing means it simply will not go faster than 190mph in any tuners' hands, for now anyway. The Cayman is not about eye-blistering terminal velocities, though, it's all down to the cornering. With the inevitable slip diff that comes with that much power and fully adjustable suspension, TechArt may finally have unlocked the true potential of this gem from Zuffenhausen.

And you can't see what it looks like from the inside anyway... – Nick Hall

Alongside occasional trips to the temples of the automotive world like Ferrari, Lamborghini and Pagani, it is one of my dirty pleasures to tour the German tuning scene whenever I get the chance. Some hacks look down at anything that doesn't come with a bought-and-paid-for test drive in Southern Spain. But for me, the chance to tackle winding roads, the Nordschleife and the kind of automotive lunacy that stays with you forever makes the endless sausage, sauerkraut, Ibis Hotels and foreign porn — the life of a sales rep, in other words — just about worth it.

They're built for a hardcore market, the cars that is, not the Pay Channel specials. And I have driven tuned rockets that felt like bucking death mules from the moment I turned the key. But occasionally they are masterpieces that show just what the manufacturers could and probably should have done. Take Porsche and the Cayman for instance.

It's fairly common knowledge the Cayman was hobbled to stop it beating the 911. The mid-engined stance is certainly a better start and with a lightweight design, all it needed was a few extra ponies and a limited slip diff to blitz its big brother on the lapcharts. And that costs about $5,000.

Now the Cayman will never match the straightline speed of its elder, but none of us spend too much time homing in on 200mph as a part of everyday life - so that won't matter.

In the corners, the Cayman has a finesse that leaves the overtly muscular 911 for dead. It's a different driving sensation, with minimal inputs and a smooth style making the difference. This is arguably the more rewarding car to drive, as momentum replaces bludgeoning power at the apex.

By making a theoretically lesser car so damned good, Porsche sailed dangerously close to the wind. It should spell trouble, but it won't. They understand the market well, which is why they've got the cash sloshing round to buy hunks of VW and not vice-versa.

People who buy the 911, especially the Carrera 4, bling-heavy Turbo, or in the worst instances, a Cabriolet, don't do it because they want the best everyday sportscar in the world. They get that bit for free, by accident. What a Porsche driver wants is to get look slick; he wants something U-ro-peen, he wants the Porschhha — the big one — which explains why that abomination of a Cayenne even got a foothold on this world.

Now trying to explain to such hair-gelled urbanite that they could buy the small one, trick it out and make it faster than the big one would be like teaching religion to a robot. It won't happen, they want to pay more and have the premium brand, even though it's not, if you get me.

Snobbery, rather than technical excellence, will keep the 911 on its pedestal. And the slick-haired, mobile-harassing broker or real estate agent will never, ever know how good the small Porsche really was.

The tuning world has shown the world the light, but luckily for Porsche's ever-expanding profit margins, the target market is more or less blind. – Nick Hall

[Nick Hall, international man of letters, is European Editor for European Car magazine, and reviews the world's most potent and storied cars for such publications as Sports Car International, Winding Road and several hundred billion others.]

Related:
More Hacker's Notebook [internal]

Now we've all seen the tide turn, smashing the SUV against the rocks like a third-world fishing boat. If you drive one in Europe, you may as well have set off a dirty bomb in a schoolyard - such is the naked aggression towards the forest-burning, baby-seal-clubbing chariots of death.

Even the car mags take an apologetic approach to Mother Earth before turning in a favorable review. The green movement is winning. And that, well that makes my blood simmer to the point of separation. Because if we tolerate this, then our children will be next.

The SUV rampage has nothing whatsoever to do with fuel economy, the clean diesels on the far side of the Atlantic will do no more damage than the noxious protestors will cause on their way to yet another anti-something march in their beaten old Renault LeCar. It is automotive bigotry based on shape and heresay, the kind of rhetoric bullshit that makes it okay to invade Land Rover's factory and slash tires across Paris.

Now soccer moms that queued round the block for the Cayenne have abandoned their battle wagons, in case their neighbor spits at them. And they've probably shifted their order to the Prius - a rolling lie when it comes to economy figures, as any magazine that has tried to achieve Toyota's claimed figures have found.

Still, the facts are lost in a sea of screams and indignant rage. We live in a world where the loudest voice wins, not the most rational, as George W has proved with devastating effect.

And governments across the globe have bowed to this perverse form of eco-terrorism. The Mayor of London recently unveiled his plan to tax them out of the city, shortly before he was suspended for comparing a Jewish journalist to an Auschwitz prison guard. Even the Germans, the land of the free when it comes to raw speed, have declared war on a whole breed. It's working, too, SUVs are now only marginally more popular than Betamax, and Pauly Shore.

But here's the kicker. If the environmental lobby feels it has momentum, feels it has won a small battle, you think they're going to stop?

No, they won't, they'll spot that a Ferrari uses more fuel than an Escalade, even a BMW M5 at flat chat will drink a light truck under the table and a Bentley Continental could suck the desert dry on a long haul. And they'll keep coming until we're all going to work on solar-powered trains or worse, one-liter hatchbacks with some batteries strapped on them...

Ferrari, Lamborghini, Pagani, then V12s, V10s and V8s of all descriptions will come into their maniacal, hair-trigger sights. In the true spirit of mob rule it won't even happen in a logical order.

If it works once, it will work again, so I say fight for the right of soccer moms to take one child to school in an oil tanker. Campaign for the nouveau rich kid to drive something so big it could wipe out a small metropolis when he gets it wrong and if you were even contemplating buying one, do it, even though it will handle like wet cement and get covered in pig's blood and slogans by an enraged vegetarian pacifist.

Because if we tolerate this, the sports car will be next...And that is a fate that should chill any Pistonhead to the bone. [by Nick Hall]

Related:
Hacker's Notebook: Ferrari Hits Its Stride [internal]

[Big welcomes all around to Nick Hall, international man of letters and reviewer of the world's most potent and storied tractors. This is his first in what we hope to be innumerable Hacker's Notebook columns. And by innumerable, we mean he's being compensated in dollars Kelvin. Thanks, Nick — ed.]

It took about 3.5 seconds to accept the invitation and had my mother's funeral been scheduled for the same day, I would have screamed foul play, demanded a police autopsy and left her above ground to stink up the joint in the summer heat. That's the power of an invitation to Ferrari to drive the new 599 GTB Fiorano.

But, really, it shouldn't have that sway. Because Ferraris, historically, have never quite matched the feeling of anticipation. They were like opening an Xbox-shaped present at Christmas, and finding encyclopedias.

They were always beautiful, and always fast, and you kind of got the impression that the components were rolled on the thighs of virgins and cooled in ass's milk, but can anybody honestly say that a Ferrari was ever the world's best handling car? The world's best cars in terms of build quality then? The world's fastest in a straight line perhaps? Err, no...

But nobody seemed willing to incur the wrath of the company and say it like it was; Ferrari's road cars were good but not the best and they broke down with the regularity of Hollywood celebrities. And yes they'd get you laid, but so would $100,000 in cash...

Ferrari's success depends on an alchemic mix of myth, racing success, good PR propagated by the lucky few allowed through the door and the sheer illusion that the most expensive and exclusive car has to be the best. The truth rarely intrudes on such matters, because we didn't want it to.

How much would we have enjoyed Magnum PI riding the bus because his pistons had flown through the crankcase and showered Higgins with molten scrap metal? Or Don Johnson thumbing a list after his essence of cool, the Testarossa, had given up in town and made him look like a prized tool? We'd have hated it...

We all wanted to believe Ferraris were faster than Superman, would keep flying till the end of time and could actually snap a woman's knicker elastic through some form of higher power. We wanted to believe they were the best cars in the world, so they were.

It was willing suspension of disbelief on a global scale. Just like with Marilyn Monroe, who was, in essence, a bit of a sturdy girl with a twinkle in her eye before romance and myth built her into a beauty queen.

Even hard-nosed journalists found themselves describing "character and flair," when they really meant the door handle had fallen off and the gearbox sounded on the edge of self-destruction. I'd even lay money there's a church devoted to the marque somewhere in this twisted world.

In the whole history of cars, that I can find right now anyway, only one man suggested that the Ferrari was anything less than perfect. He was told in no uncertain terms that it was not the car that was the problem; it was the ignorant farmer behind the wheel. His name was Ferruccio Lamborghini, and Enzo's ancestors are still licking those self-inflicted wounds.

But the truth was even when they worked, old-school Ferraris needed the tender loving care you'd afford an unstable girlfriend holding a knife in one hand and crack pipe in the other. In the wet the F40, for instance, would spin you out in your driveway...

A friend of mine who owns several 1970s 911s, themselves widowmakers that required lead in the fenders to prevent the back overtaking the front, lusted after the F40 like teenage boys want Christina Aguilera. And on the magic day of purchase he drove it one mile, one, before returning and begging the dealer to take it back.

That sums up the Ferrari ownership experience in too many historic cases. Fearful handling and scarier maintenance costs turned a dream into a nightmare for a good portion of the elite few.

Of course they have got progressively better, especially on the reliability front, but even the 355 was a knife-edge car and disabling the traction control was like booking an appointment with the nearest tree for many of the bonus-splashing money junkies that could buy them. But of course that might have been down to the coke they'd snorted, or hair gel in their eyes...

Then there were the interiors, which in the past have been so liberally splashed with Fiat components the car looked built to compete on cost with Mazda's Miata. But they could have slapped that badge on a dog turd, much as Porsche did with the Cayenne, and people would have paid premium rates.

So I shouldn't have been so excited. But still, it only took one email and I was hopping round like a small kid on Christmas Eve.

And this time something magic happened. There was no disappointment, no problems to skilfully hide away under the Italian eccentricity badge. There was nothing to suck the wind out of this experience, because the 599 GTB Fiorano is a landmark car for Ferrari: it's really, really good.

There has been a shift in focus at Ferrari, they no longer rely on the badge to sell cars and are leaping forward in terms of technology, build quality — just about everything. The F430 is a solid machine, with sublime handling, and the 599 genuinely, and there is no myth here, kicks arse.

Yes it goes 205 mph, yes it accelerates so hard it can post your kidneys through the seat and it sounds like Sirens singing from the cliffs, but they all kind of did that.

No, the really impressive bit about the 599 is that it sticks to the road like molten asphalt, that they put in a twin-plate clutch, seemingly without being asked, that the gearbox is absolutely the fastest thing attached to four wheels, that they realised the best damper technology could be brought from Buick and didn't turn up their nose. And then they actually went to the trouble of designing an exquisite interior, before gluing it together properly.

After 100 km of running nothing broke, nothing even rattled, it felt like an Audi or BMW would give way first. And it hadn't tried to kill me once. It just kept howling after the horizon with the heart and soul of an Italian tenor AND the clinical efficiency of a German heart surgeon. This car was built with more than love; they used computers and everything.

This, as much as the lung-blistering performance, excites me about the new line-up of Ferraris. And it should excite you too. Ferrari is no longer a tangled web of myth and romance, it now produces some of the best cars in the world.

Mother, plan your death very carefully. Should it coincide with a future Ferrari launch, I will leave you above ground — stinking up the joint. [by Nick Hall]

Related:
Ride the Pentagrams: Ferrari Launches 599 GTB Fiorano; More Nick Hall [internal]

We'd imagine driving a supercar in test-mule form might be a bit like eating dough out of the bowl or drinking cabernet straight from the barrel. Considering most journos are never allowed that kind of experience, it would seem Lee Noble surely trusts Jalopnik homeboy Nick Hall with his wife life. Lee let Hall take an in-development Noble M15 prototype for a spin at the company's proving grounds, an experience Hall wrote about for World Car Fans. So which is it, dough or whoa?

Exclusive: WCF Drives Noble M15 Development Mule [World Car Fans]

Related:
Here it Is: Noble Releases Pics of Upcoming M15 [internal]

Our globetrotting, supercar-flogging buddy from Blighty, Nick Hall, tells the story of Arash Farboud's bid to build a better Ferrari. After his attempt to acquire an Enzo was met with a prancing, equinine "SOL, champ," Farboud picked up a more accessable Porsche Carrera GT and used a portion of his family's pharma phortune to launch an improbable car-building project. The result was the Farboud GTS, an Audi-powered prototype that's as rough hewn as it is ready for tail-kicking action. The production product will likely be a different machine — Cosworth Ford powered, for example — but Farboud's already got plans to bring his creation to the US. And that's more than we can say for Lee Noble's hardware. What say you, Nick?

WCF Test Drive [Farboud GTS]

Related:
Here it Is: Noble Releases Pics of Upcoming M15 [internal]

We Yanks get nothing so slithery as the TVR Tuscan on these shores. In fact, we get nothing at all from TVR, which became the laughing stock of yuppiedome during the mid-1980s by inflicting some of the most egregious hardware this side of the Baltic Sea on America's newly minted upper-middle rich. But in the UK, these are heady days for TVR, which is now under the fiduciary care of a too-young Russian industrial billionaire who's goal is to make TVR into a global purveyor of wonderful things. How's he succeeding? Check out our mate Nick Hall's test drive of the Tuscan II in World Car Fans. How about a little left-hand drive action?

WCF Test Drive: TVR Tuscan II [World Car Fans]

Related:
What if TVR Bought MG [internal]

We've really taken a shine to the car reviews of UK-based writer Nick Hall, which have been featured of late on German Car Fans. This week, the motoring scribe's attention is on the the BMW 130i, that spry new baby Bimmer powered by BMW's fine 3.0-liter six. Of course we won't see it in the US this year, but if VW's upcoming R37 does as well as predicted, we're sure BMW will damn the exchange rate and bring the Sport across the pond.

GCF Test Drive: BMW 130i M Sport [German Car Fans]

Related:
BMW Introduces 130i, M Sport Variants [internal]